The huge hue and cry raised in India alleging institutionalised racism in Australia, following a wave of robbery-driven attacks on Indian students in Melbourne this summer, has provoked wry comment from African, and students from our own north-eastern states who suffer routine discrimination in this country.

For several decades a small minority of liberal publications within the Indian media has sporadically recounted shocking tales of widespread colour prejudice and undisguised discrimination suffered by African students in India.  Denial of housing facilities, social interaction and unprovoked insults are regularly reported by black students and visitors. Moreover white and north-eastern women students suffer routine socially approved sexual harassment and abuse as they are perceived to be wanton and wayward.

To their credit, the editors of the latest (June 29) issue of the best-selling Delhi-based weekly Outlook have examined the latent and often unconscious racial and colour prejudices of the Indian population, particularly of urban citizens. In a six-page cover story titled ‘Aren’t we racists too?’ author Debarshi Dasgupta graphically describes the offensive discrimination widely suffered by black Afro-American and African students and visitors, as also by dark-complexioned Indians within Indian society. With the country’s exams-obsessed school and collegiate curriculums leaving little time for teaching good manners and political correctness, even middle class Indians overtly display racial, caste, communal and colour prejudices.

Among the horror stories highlighted by Dasgupta in her forthright, no-holds-barred Outlook cover story: a Madurai-based Indian sentenced to prison for driving his wife to suicide by taunting her about her dark complexion; organisers of the IPL international cricket tournament 2008 who instructed two comely black cheerleaders of the Punjab Kings XI to return home; a Kenyan student denied entrance into a Pune pub; an attack on three Iraqi students by a 150-strong mob in Noida, on the outskirts of the national capital.

“Ask any African what it is like for him or her to be in India and you might perhaps think twice before calling Australia racist. It is indeed a very dark under-belly that India reveals when it comes to its treatment of the dark foreigner,” writes Dasgupta in a revealing story that holds a mirror to the ugly face of Indian society which tends to be hyper-sensitive on the issue of suffering — but not practising — racial discrimination and colour prejudice.

Summiya Yasmeen (Bangalore)